Mango

I was at this game and this moment has always stuck with me. Bills fans spent a decade scared and wondering what would happen to the Bills when an aging Ralph Wilson passed. Terry's first words to a cheering packed house were "OK guys, that's enough". It was a very heavy wet blanket for us in our section. https://www.buffalobills.com/video/watch-terry-pegula-on-field-ceremony-13989551

That is one way to look at it. The other is that I think this years goaltending is worth about 10-15 points more than last years goaltending. If you adjust for UPL's emergence this year then that means this team would be picking top 5 without him. A bottom 5 NHL roster is a sad place to be.

Always worth mentioning that "taxes" were written right next to "lifestyle".

We don't really "know" anybody on the internet, or any professional athletes, or any billionaires at all. We can certainly make some educated guesses based on local interactions, interviews and decisions regarding the franchise. - We know for a fact that Terry likes to meddle. It has been questioned and defended by Terry across nearly every hockey hire he has made. - We know he would rather make a decisions himself rather than professional consensus; he literally said owners thought he was crazy for the Ville Leino deal. - We know that this organization has a toxic work culture. That has been been said since before the pandemic. - We know the Sabres model is all about economics, efficiency, his family lifestyle and tax breaks. This is a definitive shift from when he bought the team. Most importantly we know that Terry is really, really, really, really bad at being the owner of an NHL team. Like historically bad. We also know that his greatest successes in business come as an engineer/geologist, not as a people manager. So it isn't crazy to be on an internet message board and attribute bad leadership qualities to somebody who has shown to be.....a historically terrible leader. Some may be more accurate than others, but most are likely not super far off base.

Shocked this one was sponsored by Bud Light. Such a Buffalo Holiday/Event seems like low hanging fruit for this to be a Labatt Blue event/game/coozie. Yuengling is also the sponsor for the on screen score.

Terry has been kicking around Buffalo circles for some time. Well before he bought the Sabres. Jerry Forton's brother-in-law is Terry's business manager in oil and gas. Jerry has always been very plugged in in Buffalo, his wife is an event planner who has been managing all the Jim Kelly and Ryan Miller events for decades. The relationship goes so far back that I always assumed Jim Kelly's decade long blubbering before Ralph died about "assembling a buying group" was Terry Pegula. Terry is a trained in oil and gas, not in people management. There is this constant take that he must be good at business, or people, or whatever because he amassed fortune. He amassed fortune by finding natural gas. He has another business partner (not employee, but partner) who manages people, structure, etc.

Just turned the pregame on. Can somebody catch me up on WTF is going on with Marty’s hair? EDIT: I’m an idiot. It’s bald for bucks.

Probably but I was talking about this year.

Whenever Levi talks about his time in Rochester it is always "it was..." almost like it was temporary, a field trip, or beneath him. It is your team dude. I really like Levi, he is already one of my favorite guys in the system. But this has irked me on a few occasions. He does know he is going back down right?

There is a place for it. Coaches who make it their whole personality have a pretty short timeline with pretty drastic spikes of improvement then failure.

That is a pretty short timeline, a sign of effective and efficient coaching. Another plus 1 for keeping Donnie and Co.

Right. I was just putting it out there.

I am outside of Buffalo these days, but people should start brining Pegula signs to the games. Especially for games not on MSG where they are likely to get actual air time.

He’s watching all that video of this team trying hard.

I don't understand how anybody can say they are not. The Buffalo Sabres under Terry Pegula are the worst era of hockey for any franchise in the history of the NHL. Literally nobody has ever been worse. It isn't close. It doesn't stop there, the Pegula lead Sabres are amongst the worst run sports teams amongst the big 4 leagues in the US. That isn't hyperbole.

- Enough anger towards the Sabres may spur some additional spending on PSL's for the Bills? - The town could use more breweries, I drink more when I am sad, and I am more sad when I watch the Sabres. - Maybe we can reduce the fanbase just a little bit more so that the team can start playing in the Harbor Center. That would free up the calendar for KBC to make room for a 10 year Taylor Swift residency.

Speaking of, aren't him and Donnie due for another extension?

You know how the Dallas Cowboys are the butt of a lot of jokes because of Jerry Jones? That’s the Sabres. Except instead of being an OK yet dysfunctional team, they’re just not any good and don’t have any redeeming qualities.

They’ve been playing him at a 67 game pace since the new year. You would have to go back to 2018 to find a goalie who played more than that. There are only 3 between 2018-2024 who have played that much. It isn’t sustainable for most goaltenders. Let alone one who just found his pro game.

“You must not be watching, because if you actually watch us play you can see we are playing hard” Alex Tuch tonight, probably.

Under normal circumstances in most sports, including hockey, if a player as a 2 month long injury with surgery they normally don’t go from zero team participation, to 100% practice practice and playing in a game all within 24 hours. So for me this isn’t just about the last 10 games. It’s the timeline of injury, first practice, 100% practice, to playing in a game. Had Quinn come back two weeks ago and been skating with the team, sure, I get it. You can’t talk about Quinn playing the last 10 games without talking about the entire timeline. In that context I just don’t see the value for the player.

Oh totally, of course JQ wants to skate, compete, and play. I was mostly responding to the posts that said Quinn was playing because of some legitimate value add to his career. That these games would be somehow impactful to his progression. They won’t.

8-10 games before a 6 month break from regular season hockey won't make an impact on a player with 94 career NHL games. He may not even feel like he has his legs back underneath him before the season ends. My quick $0.02 is that this move is to help protect Donnie and Kevyn by trying to see if they can use Quinn to get as close to 91 points more so than they believe they are helping Jack out.

This whole thing started off by me saying that it would be nice if we could somehow acquire 1C and push Tage to the second line. Albeit super unlikely. You told me that Tage was a true 1C based on pay and ice time. Mitts had the highest TOI of all the centers, now his pay as the 35th paid center in the league is commensurate with his performance and there is nobody else on the roster? Did you just come around to moving Tage down the roster?

You said “paid like a 1C”. The “on this team must have been silent” I guess. $7M is dirt cheap for a 1C right now, decent for a 2C, and an overpay for a 3C across the league. But you likely already know that. Worth noting that until a few weeks ago there was another center on this team that was getting more TOI than Tage Thomson.